What’s in a letter? For a woman living in England in the nineteenth century with limited access to social freedoms and even paper—everything. Historians have given mixed reviews on the value of Jane Austen’s surviving personal letters. Some brush off…
The year is 1649 and Lady Jean Wemyss has a headache. Since paracetamol won’t be invented for another several hundred years, Jean reaches for the next best thing: a handwritten recipe book. The cure, written down in her mother’s neat…
Please note that this article includes discussion of state violence against women, racism, and violent death. Thousands of Hindu widows burned alive on pyres in colonised India, fanning the flames of British imperial rule. During much of the 19th century,…